Digital Realty Trust

Digital Realty Trust

Type	Public
Traded as	(NYSE: DLR)
Industry	Datacenter acquisition, ownership, development and operation
Headquarters	San Francisco, United States of America
Key people	Michael Foust, CEO A. William Stein, CFO and CIO Chris Crosby, SVP Jim Trout, SVP Scott Peterson, SVP Josh Mills, General Counsel
Products	Turn-Key Datacenters Build to Suit Datacenters Buy to Suit Datacenters Powered Base Buildings Critical Facilities Management
Employees	Approximately 180 (August 2008)[1]
Website	digitalrealtytrust.com digitalrealtytrust.co.uk digitalrealtytrust.fr digitalrealtytrust.ie

Digital Realty Trust is a company which owns and operates data centers worldwide. The company custom builds data centers and shell buildings suitable for companies to build out their own datacenters for both domestic and international tenants. The company provides data center facilities to businesses both directly and through partners. Digital Realty Trust has built out data centers for a number of notable companies such as Yahoo!, and there are consistent rumors that it has provided data center services for Google as well.^[2]

The company has built out over 70 data center properties in 27 locations in North America and Europe.

Digital Realty Trust operates as a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “DLR”.^[3] The company currently employs approximately 180 people throughout the United States and Europe. Corporate headquarters for the company is located in San Francisco, California with sales and technical services operations based in Dallas, Texas. The company’s European portfolio management, design, construction and operations are administered from its offices in London, England and Dublin, Ireland. The company also maintains various regional offices in Paris, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Northern Virginia.

Digital Realty Trust has attained additional notability through development of a number of innovative success and efficiency metrics such as breaking down stages of data center construction into discrete units assessed in terms of kW of IT load, and "Power Usage Effectiveness" (PUE) which is the ratio of power delivered to IT equipment to the total amount of power used by the data center facility.

The company is a member of The Green Grid and has helped pioneer concepts of energy efficient and energy conserving data center design.^[4][5][6]

History

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. held its initial public offering in November 2004. At the time, its portfolio of 24 properties consisted primarily of those contributed by a private equity fund: GI Partners Fund I. (GI Partners Fund I is a private equity fund that was formed in February, 2001, after a six-month selection process conducted by the California Public Employees Retirement System). Upon GI Partners’ selection, CalPERS provided a $500 million equity commitment to GI Partners to invest in technology-related real estate and technology operating businesses. In addition, CB Richard Ellis Investors, a subsidiary of CB Richard Ellis and members of GI Partners’ management provided a commitment of $26.3 million.

As of June 30, 2008, the company achieved a 21% annual growth rate in Funds from Operations (FFO) per diluted share and unit and a 33% annual growth rate in Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (Adjusted EBITDA) since its IPO. Digital Realty Trust was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as the top performing REIT in 2007 based on a three year average shareholder return of 47.4% and has been regularly recognized as a leader in REIT performance.^[7][8]

Awards

First LEED Gold certified facility in the U.S.^[9][10]

First BREEAM certified “Excellent” in the UK^[11]

Cited as one of InfoWorld Magazine’s 2008 “Green 15”^[12]

See also

Data Centers Publicly Traded REITs LEED BREEAM US Green Building Council The Green Grid

Footnotes and References

1. ^ Yahoo Finance
2. ^ Database and Network Journal (June, 2008). "Digital Realty Trust announces lease agreement with Yahoo!". Database and Network Journal. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3234/is_3_38/ai_n29447265?tag=content;col1. 
3. ^ NYSE Listing
4. ^ Energy Star Datacenter Report to Congress
5. ^ Lohr, Steve (June 17, 2008). "Demand for Data Puts Engineers in Spotlight". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/technology/17data.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1214599402-t/Iiba/5KIFzvIPcmekSzw. Retrieved May 1, 2010. 
6. ^ "Market Spotlight: Data Center REITs". International Business Times. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20080408/market-spotlight-data-center-reits.htm. 
7. ^ REIT Performance
8. ^ Turn-Key Datacenter Leasing Performance
9. ^ Industry's First LEED Gold Certification
10. ^ "Digital Realty Mines Old Building and Gets LEED Gold". ComputerWorld. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9080780. 
11. ^ Industry's First BREEAM Excellent Certification
12. ^ InfoWorld Green 15